[VIFF 2020] REVIEW: 'A Life Turned Upside Down: My Dad's an Alcoholic' provides laughs and tears
A Life Turned Upside Down, directed by Kenji Katagiri.
Aided by manga-style thought bubbles that periodically pop up when Saki delves into an internal monologue, A Life Turned Upside Down: My Dad’s an Alcoholic is a funny and touching look at what happens when self-destruction pulls everyone down. Based on a semi-autobiographical web comic by Mariko Kikuchi, director Kenji Katagiri’s sensitive touch and ability to mix humour with the dark depths of human emotion elevates this film above your usual melodramatic fare.
We first meet Saki when she’s eight years old, and her father, Toshifumi Tadoroko (Kiyohiko Shibukawa) is already an alcoholic. As your typical Japanese salaryman, he believes that heavy social drinking leads to better business. He routinely passes out in his foyer, and his dutiful wife Saeko (Rie Tomosaka) is not only forced to drag him inside and clean him up, but to also cater to his friends’ every whim, who come over to play mahjong and smoke and drink away their weekend nights. Saki marks a red ‘X’ on the calendar for every night her father comes home hammered, and this continues when we meet Saki (Honoka Matsumoto) again as a teenager and young adult.
Unable to bear her husband’s wanton drinking alone, Saeko finds solace in reading religious scriptures, but the burden becomes too much and she ultimately leaves the family under tragic circumstances. Saki and her litter sister, Fumi (Yui Imaizumi), are left alone as they continue to watch their father’s alcoholism pull their family into darker emotional depths. Toshifumi’s drinking buddies are a major antagonistic force and represent much of the oppressive values of Japanese society, blaming the women for putting so much pressure on Toshifumi to provide and also frequently enabling his alcoholism.
Kiyohiko Shibukawa as Toshifumi Tadoroko and Honoka Matsumoto as Saki.
Saki grows up without any concrete life goals or direction; she’s insecure and embarrassed by her father, and her gaslighting douche boyfriend Satoshi (Shogou Hama) makes matters even worse. She finds solace by channeling her anger and frustration into a comic book, with some support from Fumi, whose biting honesty cuts through all the facades, and Jun (Yuri Tsunematsu), a loyal friend who excitedly supports her artistic endeavours.
What makes this film so good is that it has a surprising amount of depth. While Toshifumi is depicted as despicable drunkard who cares nothing about his family, the film leaves subtle hints that he does. In traditional Japanese fashion, much of his thoughts, feelings and desires are left unsaid; his actions are only understood much later. His best friend at work, Kinoshita (Kenta Hamano), is a teetotaler. He stumbles home drunk, but not without a box of Koala’s March cookies in his pocket. When Saki’s attitudes towards his alcoholism morph from quiet resentment, with an increasing number of red X’s on the calendar, to indifference, when Saki no longer bothers to draw the Xs, Toshifumi takes notice and in the film’s last moments leaves behind a message that drives a stake through Saki’s heart.
The light accordion music and its manga-infused style keeps the film light and airy despite its dark thoughts, and the characters’ lack of forgiveness toward one another prevents it from becoming a generic dramedy tied with a pretty bow. Slowly but surely, it does manage to pull you into more complex family dynamics, and by the end of the film you realize that this isn’t about any one person doing anything wrong, but the various types of relationships, both destructive and cathartic, that can develop over time from a singular issue.
A Life Turned Upside Down: My Dad's an Alcoholic gets three stars out of four.
